The Meg vs. Mosasaurus
Description Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, these two super-sized marine beasts of science fiction vie for supremacy of the sea. Can a 75ft shark defeat a 84ft reptile that eats Jaws' brothers and sisters for breakfast, lunch and dinner, or will the Meg be next on the Meuse lizard's menu? Interlude Hiro: Much like the heated debates that plague comic book shops around the world of Batman vs. Superman, Hulk vs. Wolverine, Iron Man vs. Captain America, the Justice League vs. the Avengers, or any other plethora of battle combinations, paleontology nerds like myself have arguments very similar just for the fun of it. Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. Spinosaurus is a common match and was fun to watch in Jurassic Park III, but this Fatal Fiction will be focused on two of the largest predators that ever haunted the ocean... well, their exaggerated sci-fi counterparts, anyway. MBStarscream: The Meg, the 22 meter megalodon that gave the fin to extinction and hid in the Mariana Trench until Jason Statham decided to hunt it down. Hiro: And Mosasaurus maximus, Jurassic World's 25 meter sea monster attraction. I'm Hiro Hamada. MBStarscream: I'm MBStarscream. Hiro: And it's our job to examine both warriors' strength, abilities, weapons, and weaknesses to see who would win in a fight. The Meg Hiro: 23.03 million years ago, a new age dawned on the Earth. It was the Miocene epoch, and the planet was in the throes of a tectonic upheaval; mountain ranges we know today as the Himalayas, the Andes and the Rockies soared skyward, and global weather patterns changed, causing dramatic shifts around Earth. But it was the sea that experienced the greatest change. MBStarscream: Powerful ocean currents carried nutrients from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, creating a lush ecosystem. Millions of new lifeforms flourished; mammals that once roamed the land were now adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, and evolved fins to take advantage of this new food source. But this peaceful sea was... misleading, to say the absolute least. Hiro: Indeed. 50ft below the surface, monsters sliced through the deep. Monsters that were so huge, if they were still around today-- MBStarscream: Cough, whichtheyareaccordingtothemovie'slogic, cough... Hiro: --We would definitely stay away from the water for the rest of our days. These beasts belonged to the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the ancestry of the Great White Shark during the Early Cretaceous, and were named... Carcharocles megalodon. MBStarscream: Or just megalodon for short. Or the Meg for shorter. Reaching 75ft in length and likely weighing 50 short tons, these fictional sharks managed to live past the end of the Pliocene where their real life counterparts died out 3.6 million years ago, and resided in the Mariana Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean about 200 kilometres east of the Mariana Islands. Hiro: One day, rescue diver Jonas Taylor was attempting to save a group of scientists in a damaged nuclear submarine when he saw the hull of the sub being rammed by a more normal sized male megalodon individual. Two of his crew are trapped in the damaged sub; Taylor was forced to flee, realizing that attempting rescue would result in the death of everyone on the deep-submergence rescue vehicle. Moments after, the nuclear sub exploded. Taylor's account of the story was dismissed by Dr. Heller, who believed that Taylor turned coward due to pressure-induced psychosis. MBStarscream: Oh, how wrong that doctor would be when a group of scientists explored the trench, unwittingly releasing the megalodon. The group managed to track and poison the megalodon, but in their moment of triumph... The Meg suddenly bursts out of the water, swallowing The Wall whole; who had been swimming in the water after being pranked, grabs the dead megalodon and lands right on the boat! MBStarscream: Premature celebration. Ding! Hiro: The Meg then killed Heller, who had distracted her so he wouldn't kill Jaxx, and wounded Zhang, who eventually died from his injuries. That night, Morris attempted to destroy the Meg himself by ordering a helicopter crew to drop improvised depth charges at her. He approached the remains, but discovered it was a whale. The Meg then appeared and killed Morris while biting into the whale carcass. MBStarscream: Taylor and the remaining Mana One crew resolved to track and kill the shark. The Meg was en route to a crowded beach on Sanya Bay in China. She killed several beachgoers before the Mana One crew projected audio of a whale call to divert the shark's attention toward them. Taylor managed to cut the Meg's abdomen with his sub, as well as stab her in the eye with poison. Suyin evacuated the crew to a boat as other sharks, attracted by fresh blood, approach and devoured the immobilized megalodon. Hiro: And what a challenge she gave our heroes before they were finally able to extinct her for good. Being a 100,000lb shark, the Meg has monstrous levels of physical strength that mostly come from her large jaws filled with row upon row of compressed, blade-like teeth. The jaws of historical megalodons could exert a bite force of up to 110,000 to 180,000 newtons, or 25,000 to 40,000 lbf, so just imagine what a 75ft one could do. MBStarscream: Well, seeing how she could tear through the carcasses of whales and smaller megalodons, it's probably quite bloody devastating. She also caused a boat to capsize when she landed on it to claim the smaller megalodon as her big snack, unintentionally dragged multiple platforms with people standing on them around the place while going for a casual swim, inflicted nasty damage on mini subs by biting them, and smashed through solid rock. Hiro: This huge swimmer isn't a slow one either; she was able to chase mini subs and keep up with them, and managed to grab the smaller megalodon before anyone could react. As well as that, she was able to catch several beachgoers off guard while attacking Sanya Bay, attacking too fast for her unlucky victims to escape, and effectively flee from helicopter gunfire. MBStarscream: Not that bullets would do good against a shark of this size, seeing as how she wasn't hurt by an indirect hit from an explosive torpedo, and literally had to be eaten by a group of smaller sharks after Taylor had already sliced her open with his sub and pushed a harpoon ''right into her eye ''ALL THE WAY INTO HER BRAIN CAVITY! And let's not forget how she was able to live in the Mairana Trench for millions of years, despite its crushing pressure of 1,086 bars, or 15,750 psi. Hiro: The Meg's eyesight is likely similar to the vision of her great white brethren, which is okay at best by shark standards, but still allowed her to see fine above the water. The Meg also has deadly hearing, being able to hear up to at least 700-800 feet away, and her hearing ranges from 10 hertz to 800 hertz. On average, sharks are well known for their powerful sense of smell, particularly great whites, which can smell things up to three miles away. MBStarscream: Most sharks have an electromagnetic sense that allows them to perceive natural electrical stimuli, such as electricity produced by muscles when they move or even the brain. Some sharks might even use this to sense the earth's magnetic fields to navigate. It's quite possible that the Meg uses this sense to track whatever she may be hunting down. Hiro: And if you don't know what the lateral line is, it's a system of sense organs found in aquatic vertebrates, used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelial cells, known as hair cells, which respond to displacement caused by motion and transduce these signals into electrical impulses via excitatory synapses. The Meg likely uses this system to sense and react to submarines, among other things. MBStarscream: But sadly, not all sharks are perfect killing machines. The Meg can have a really tough time using her senses in areas that give off electric sonar frequencies, and just because she's built like a tank doesn't mean she's not a mortal animal that can only endure so much before sleeping with the fishes. Hiro: The Meg's only options for attack are her jaws and tail, and is bound to the ocean, incapable of moving around and surviving on land. Plus, sharks are plagued by lactic acid after long physical activity and if flipped upside down or belly up, it will become paralyzed. If this is sustained long enough, the shark will die, so who's to say the Meg can't have that weakness as well? MBStarscream: Plus, she can also get distracted if she hears whale calls or sees a sub blinking its lights at her repeatedly. But even with all her problems, this is a shark that you will need a bigger boat to deal with. And I mean a way, way, WAAAAAAAY bigger boat. Morris climbs onto the whale carcass, only to get devoured by the Meg as she bites into the whale, leaving only one of his hands. Mosasaurus Hiro: On August 25, 2000, InGen researchers discovered traceable DNA fragments on a recently uncovered mosasaur specimen while testing a prototype iron analyzer. Dr. Henry Wu believed this to be the only way of recreating aquatic organisms without extracting blood from mosquitoes trapped in amber. MBStarscream: Seven years later, Mosasaurus was successfully recreated by InGen under the wing of the Masrani Global Corporation for their new dinosaur park Jurassic World. The species created was Mosasaurus maximus, which many believe to be synonymous with the species M. hoffmannii, but others believe it to be a valid species. She was certainly something else compared to her Cretaceous counterpart, reaching a whooping 84ft in length and weighing 30 tons. Hiro: The Mosasaurus lived in a 3 million gallon pool of water located near Main Street known as the Jurassic World Lagoon and visitors could watch her feed on sharks in the Mosasaurus Feeding Show. Visitors could also view her through an aquarium below the lagoon known as the Underwater Observatory to see her. Following the escape of the Jurassic World Aviary's residents from their enclosure during the Isla Nublar Incident of 2015, the Mosasaurus devoured a Pteranodon that was flying over her enclosure to capture Zara Young, also eating Zara, who was in the talons of the Pteranodon. MBStarscream: At the end of the battle between a rogue Indominus Rex, the park's veteran T-Rex Roberta, and Blue the Velociraptor, guess who was there to help save the park? The Mosasaurus beaches herself to catch the Indominus in her jaws and drags her screeching victim to the bottom of the lagoon, thus killing her and saving Jurassic World. MBStarscream: "(gargling) No fair, that's cheating!" Hiro: One year later in 2016, after the park's demise due to the damage and deaths caused by the Indominus, a group of mercenaries were sent to the island to recover the bones of the hybrid from the Jurassic World Lagoon for the creation of a new genetically modified hybrid: the Indoraptor. A submersible was sent down to retrieve the bones, and it sent them up on a buoy before it was attacked and devoured by the Mosasaurus. MBStarscream: Then some other idiot named Jack got attacked by Roberta and managed to escape via a helicopter's rope ladder. But just when things were looking up for him, the Mosasaurus told Roberta to hold her beer and CHOMP! Hiro: Things were already chaotic enough on that stormy night, but the lagoon's gates were left open when Jack was fleeing from Roberta, allowing the Mosasaurus to escape from the island and swim into the ocean, allowing her to hunt in the deep and thus becoming the bigger fish to everything in the sea after already being the bigger fish to everything on Isla Nublar. MBStarscream: Well, guess who's never going surfing again? This guy! Hiro: The Mosasaurus is perhaps the strongest out of all ''InGen's creations, though mostly underwater. She is a very powerful marine reptile that was shown to be strong enough to drag the struggling Indominus, who was comparable in weight in Roberta, into the waters of her lagoon with little, if any struggle. '''MBStarscream: She has incredible jaw strength with a bite force of 13K, which isn't nearly as strong as a megalodon's, but still twice as strong as a T-Rex's 12,800lb bite force. She uses this strength to great effect when hunting, using her jaws to kill a Pteranodon and break the bones in the Indominus' neck, who had already taken multiple neck bites from Roberta minutes prior. ' Hiro: This isn't a predator that takes large bites out of its prey, but one that pierces its prey and swallows it whole with a double-hinged jaw connected to a flexible skull. In reality, Mosasaurus fed on large fish, plesiosaurs, seabirds, sharks and even other mosasaurs. It would also prey on pterosaurs and some unlucky dinosaurs that fell into the water. The InGen Mosasaurus was fed by the volunteers with dead great white sharks and jumps out of the water to feed. Mosasauruses were probably ambush hunters and in the film seems to be a patient predator, being able to wait until the Pteranodon was low enough over the lagoon or until the railing had been knocked away and the Indominus was within reach. MBStarscream: In reality, Mosasaurus probably rarely ventured close to shore for risk of getting stuck and then suffocating under its own weight, but Jurassic World's Mosasaurus partially beached herself to grab the Indominus. Hey, I don't blame her. If I haven't eaten since lunchtime, I'm gonna get my jaws on anything. Hiro: Sure you would. Although Mosasauruses lived their lives in the seas and were able to stay underwater for long period of time, they still needed to breathe air and had to surface periodically in order to breathe. Their ancestors dwelled in water as early crocodiles. The cloned Mosasaurus has very thick skin that is hard to puncture, judging by the Indominus trying to use her claws on her foot to scratch the Mosasaurus' back in a desperate attempt to escape her jaws, to no avail. MBStarscream: The Mosasaurus clearly has very high stamina needed to sustain long periods of swimming, and was fast enough to grab the Indominus from behind before she could notice what was coming. And you know how fast ''she ''was? She was able to react to lunging raptors! Hiro: She was also able to catch a Pteranodon right out of nowhere before it could escape, creep up on a small submarine and close her jaws on it without the men inside noticing her, leap out of the water high enough to catch Jack in her mouth, and stalk a group of surfers inside a wave without being spotted. The Mosasaurus has a slim body plan with a long strong tail and swims with a serpentine undulation of the whole body, using her limbs more for maneuvering than locomotion. MBStarscream: Like any water-dwelling reptile, the Mosasaurus has a sense of smell that allows her to detect prey items outside the water and effectively hunt them, let it be a dead great white, a Pteranodon, an Indominus in the middle of fighting a T-Rex and a raptor, and a mercenary hanging onto a helicopter's rope ladder. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Hiro: Now onto the disappointing part: Weaknesses. The Mosasaurus' jaws and teeth are specialized for seizing and holding prey, rather than being specialized for cutting and dismembering, as a shark’s teeth are. Her teeth are cone-shaped, and lack a cutting edge altogether. The creature’s skull is constructed similar to a modern snake, meaning that she has flexible jaw joints that can be used to “ratchet” prey into her throat. As such, rather than dismembering prey, she will instead swallow it whole. MBStarscream: She also spent nine years in a lagoon being fed sharks, so what combat experience does she have apart from a Pteranodon, the Indominus, a submersible and a group of mercenaries? Hiro: And as I mentioned, she has to breathe air like all other reptiles, so she needs to come to the surface now and again to fill her lungs with oxygen. Like the Meg, the Mosasaurus is also restricted by the water and has the typical biological weaknesses of any mortal animal. She also has only two forms of attack, which are her jaws and tail, and her body type is inefficient for certain types of high-speed manoeuvres despite her impressive swimming speed of thirty miles per hour. MBStarscream: But this would be a ''real ''croc from Hell that you should be definitely be glad isn't in our waters now. The Mosasaurus emerges from the water and clamps her mighty jaws shut on the Pteranodon, accidentally killing Zara as well as the pterosaur shrieks in pain. Zach and Gray Mitchell watch in horror as the Mosasaurus drops back down underwater, dragging the struggling Pteranodon with her. Fatal Fiction Mario flips a coin. Hiro: Well, the Mosasaurus doesn't have territory to help her out against the biggest shark she'll ever meet, with this battle between sea monsters taking place in none other than the Pacific Ocean. Is that enough for the Meg to survive this though, or will the Meuse lizard enjoy a whole lot of fish sticks today? MBStarscream: Still ditching the boat for a helicopter just in case. The idea of either one of these in the water is... Uh uh. No thanks. ---- Pacific Ocean Deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a long, thin creature with four flippers and a crocodilian skull was on the hunt. She was about nine-tenths as long as baseball base distances, and was two-and-a-half times as heavy as the anchor of a cruise ship. In the past two years since her freedom from her tank on Isla Nublar, the Mosasaurus '''had complete freedom to traverse throughout the oceans, leading her to the western Pacific. She had her prey in her sight. Just hundreds of feet away was a pod of humpback whales. She slowly swam towards them, gradually closing the gap between them. As the gap was closed to 150ft, she picked her target: a particularly large female. She darted forward, opening her massive jaws to grab her prey. Her snout rammed into something rising from the depths in front of her. She turned back a bit, getting a better look at the object. Swimming in front of her was the largest shark she had ever seen. She had been fed countless sharks during her time in Jurassic World, and had encountered some in the wild, but she had never seen one as large as the one in front of her. It was nearly as long as her, reaching 75ft in length. And it was feasting on her prey. She wouldn't stand for it. This ocean wasn't big enough for two super predators. Whoever won this clash to the death, the water would run red with blood. '''FIGHT! The Meg '''swallowed the remains of the humpback whale as she felt something ram into her side, forcing her back. She gasped for oxygen, unable to breathe if she didn’t move. She moved her tail from side to side, slowly picking up speed. Suddenly, something grabbed her tail. She moved her tail with more force, soon freeing herself. She turned, getting a better view of her attacker. She turned again, snapping her jaws at the Mosasaurus, who dove under her. The Mosasaurus swam deeper underwater before turning around and swimming at full speed towards the Meg. She rammed into the shark's underside, striking her near her pelvic fins. The Meg, slightly stunned, tried to swim off as the Mosasaurus bit into her. She thrashed around, soon freeing herself from the reptile’s grasp. The megalodon quickly dove and turned, snapping at her attacker. Before she could land a blow, the Mosasaurus escaped. The Meg followed her, determined to eliminate the threat. The Mosasaurus knew she was being pursued. She sharply turned to the right and dove down, attempting to strike from under again. The shark followed her. As the two dove deeper, the Mosasaurus lost sight of the Meg. After half a minute of searching, she felt a burning pain in her right side. The Meg had struck her. She attempted to swim off, but the Meg snapped her jaws again, instantly tearing a chunk out of one of the reptile’s rear flippers. The Meg struck one more time, grazing her opponent’s tail. The Mosasaurus swam away, but to no avail. The Meg instantly smelled the blood in the water and began to close in on her prey. The shark quickly approached the Mosasaurus. She lunged forward and opened her jaws, but closed them on nothing. She looked around, seeing the Mosasaurus swimming towards the surface. The Meg darted after her. The Mosasaurus turned in an arc, descending again. As the Meg turned to face her, the Mosasaurus swam towards her and rammed into her gill slits. The shark, instantly stunned by the blow, was helpless as the Mosasaurus sank her teeth into her pectoral fin, tearing through it. She quickly moved on to the shark’s neck, repeatedly closing her jaws on it. However, the Meg quickly escaped the mosasaur’s loose grip on her wide neck. The Meg turned and snapped her jaws a few feet away from her opponent’s face. The Mosasaurus lunged forward and slammed her jaws shut, taking out a pelvic fin. The Meg thrashed her tail back and forth, quickly propelling herself forward as she closed her jaws on the mosasaur’s side. The two predators continued to go back and forth, snapping jaws and grazing skin, until the Mosasaurus shot forward. She attempted to dive under and stun the Meg, but she knew where she was. She followed her down until the Mosasaurus swam for the surface again. She needed air. The Meg found her chance to kill her opponent. As the Mosasaurus was at the surface, she darted up to the killer of Henry Wu's finest experiment. Her jaws thrust forward as she rapidly approached her prey. Once she was close enough, she chomped down on the Mosasaurus' tail, ripping a chunk of it out. The Mosasaurus turned around and grabbed the Meg by her face with her jaws. Then she continued her ascent until she exploded out of the water and tossed her smaller opponent to her right. She dropped back down under the water as the Meg tried to recover. Not wasting a second, the Mosasaurus darted forward and clamped her jaws on the Meg's left pedoral fin and started to descend, bringing the megalodon with her. The Meg thrashed in the Mosasaurus' grip, but escaping the jaws of a marine reptile twice your size is easier said than done. The Mosasaurus eventually released her opponents' fin and descended deeper, disappearing in the darkness. The Meg angrily turned left and right in search for her reptilian enemy, vengeful thoughts filling her mind. Oh, how she would love tasting that bitch's blood. It would be the best meal she had since those whales she used to clash with back in the glory days all those eons ago. She continued looking around in hopes of seeing a lizard one-and-three-fourths times as long as a semi-trailer truck swimming her way, but learned the hard way that the Mosasaurus had a nasty surprise from below. The blow to her midsection was a shark's equivalent of someone getting punched in the stomach; it knocked the wind out of her and made her double over in pain. She looked up to see the Mosasaurus descending. The two predators faced each other, each wounded and exhausted, but far from finished. Their eyes narrowing with murderous intent, the two marine carnivores started to circle one another menacingly, sizing each other up, thinking with their primeval brains how to go in for the kill. The Mosasaurus looked at the large bulk of the megalodon and thought she out outmaneuver and attack her adversary's fins or tail, unsure whether or not she could get a solid bite on the bulkier areas of the shark. The Meg decided to chomp down on the midsection of the Mosasaurus' long body to immobilize her and tear her apart, but really, any area of the body would do. They circled closer together. The Mosasaurus slinked through the water in alternating slow and then faster nervous bursts of speed when the Meg swam a bit closer. The Meg just swam in a steady, watchful way with her piercing black eyes. The Mosasaurus cautiously and quickly made one last trip to the surface for air and quickly dived, trying to maneuver underneath the Meg. Suddenly, the Meg twisted with a burst of speed and rushed the Mosasaurus, not allowing her to get an upper hand (or in this case, upper fin) by positioning herself to strike from below. The two beasts came clashing together, the Mosasaurus attempting to maneuver out of the way and failing to get a bite to the tail of the Mega. The Meg turned her body to place the Mosasaurus squarely in front of her jaws and chopped down on the quivering flesh of the lizard’s tail as she tried to slither away. As the Meg bit down again and again, the flailing Mosasaurus' muscles seized and then went limp as blood spilled out into the water. When the Meg finally stopped, the Mosasaurus' bloodied corpse sank to the depths of the ocean, never to terrorize the waters again. Grabbing InGen's deceased creation in her jaws, the Meg swam off with her new prey, eager to taste something new today. She was still queen of the ocean. '''FATALITY! Results MBStarscream: Indominus, you've just been avenged. Hiro: Being huge specimens of their already huge species, both the Meg and the Mosasaurus had their fair share of advantages over the other, with the Mosasaurus being twice as large as the Meg and having superior maneuverability thanks to her slim body plan. The Meg also had her own weaknesses that the Mosasaurus could exploit, like her exposed gills and fins. MBStarscream: Size and maneuverability are a good combination and all, but that just wasn't enough for the Mosasaurus to compete with the Meg for long, who was ten times worse in just about every other category. Her teeth are designed for taking pieces off of an opponent, not holding an opponent and swallowing it whole. Hiro: The Mosasaurus wouldn't be able to get her jaws around the Meg's much thicker and bulkier body, and it would only take one catastrophic bite from the Meg to a vital area to end the battle early. The Meg's bite force outclassed that of the Mosasaurus by a landslide, and due to the Mosasaurus' body type being incapable of high speed swimming, the Meg has another huge advantage in maneuverability, despite being less agile in some manoeuvres. MBStarscream: Matters weren't helped by the fact that the Mosasaurus lived her whole life in a lagoon on a dinosaur-populated island that was doomed to be destroyed in a volcanic eruption, never having to face any sort of dangerous foe. As such, the Meg had a huge advantage when it came to experience in fighting, having hailed from the Miocene epoch 23 million years ago and somehow survived to the present. Hiro: The difference in durability couldn't be any more clear either. Aside from the Mosasaurus' skin being too thick for the claws on the Indominus' foot to penetrate, we've never seen her preform any other impressive durability feats in the Jurassic World trilogy so far in stark contrast to the Meg, who took an indirect hit from an explosive torpedo and didn't die from having her stomach sliced open and a harpoon lodged in her eye until a group of smaller sharks devoured her. That should paint this picture very, very clearly. MBStarscream: I guess you could say the Meg was more than the Mosasaurus could chew. Hiro: The Meg wins. Advantages The Meg (Winner) * Jaws built more for dismembering than holding * More robust body * Much stronger bite force * Faster swimmer in some cases * More experienced fighter * More durable Polls Who would you be rooting for? The Meg Mosasaurus Both Do you agree with the results? 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